[Irl-dean] A nice summary of why not to use client-side XHTML ...

[Barry McMullin]

Hi Folks -

I touched on the debate about serving XHTML to the client
side before on irl-dean - e.g., here:

<http://list.eeng.dcu.ie/pipermail/irl-dean/2006/000525.html>

so I just thought I would share a new resource that I came across
today (thanks to gawds). I think it summarises the state of play
very comprehensively and fairly:

"Beware of XHTML", David Hammond
<http://www.webdevout.net/articles/beware-of-xhtml>

The bottom line is this:

  "XHTML is a very good thing, and I certainly hope to see it
  gain widespread acceptance in the future. However, it simply
  isn't widely supported in its proper form. XHTML is an XML
  format, and to force a web browser to treat it like HTML is
  going against the whole purpose of XHTML and also inevitably
  causes other complications. Assuming you don't want to
  dramatically limit access to your information, XHTML can only
  be used incorrectly, be interpretted as invalid markup by most
  user agents, cause unwanted results in others, and offer no
  added benefit over HTML. HTML 4.01 Strict is still what most
  user agents and search engines are most accustomed to, and
  there's absolutely nothing wrong with using it if you don't
  need the added benefits of XML."

Enjoy - Barry.

--
Barry McMullin, Dublin City University
  phone: +353-1-700-5432
  web: http://www.eeng.dcu.ie/~mcmullin/